I have of late come to the conclusion that things are not as they should be. I wish this was not the case but sadly it is. Only today I was in a pub sat irritatingly near a woman with the kind of grating, piercing laugh that cuts through you like kitchen scissors through cheap wrapping paper. Even her friends looked at her in abject horror, as if they didn’t know exactly how to treat this odious mostrosity before them: walk away or silence her raucous caterwalling with a pencil to the throat? Needless to say they did neither – instead they let her carry on with her own unique brand of auditory rape. I simply sat with my friend, put off our pints.